


waiting on eternity

by sannlykke



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Bittersweet, M/M, Mutual Pining, Separations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-12
Updated: 2015-07-12
Packaged: 2018-04-08 23:38:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4325229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sannlykke/pseuds/sannlykke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The war strands them, leaving more than broken bones, and both know the world they once knew will not return.</p><p> </p><p>(Of course, <i>knowing</i> and <i>wanting</i> are two very different things.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	waiting on eternity

**Author's Note:**

> Another prompt fic! ...I have even less excuses this time, because although I was prompted (akamayu + medieval + pining) this was _almost entirely_ an exercise in self-indulgence. ~~My soul is also being consumed by MayuAka. Save me.~~ Again, this has been edited from the original post.
> 
> Setting is very loosely based on the Jokyu War (1221) during the Kamakura Period of Japan, and general storyline greatly influenced by the following song:  
> 
>
>>   
> the rain falls steady, over long grass in our old home  
> i hear you still guard that lonely city  
> to which village the music of the shepherd’s flute travels  
> as fate, taking root, binds us
>> 
>> as we sit in the temple, listening to the rain,  
> waiting on eternity.
>> 
>> [fade away](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--BqapCA3vg) \- jay chou  
> 

“I will wait for you, Chihiro.”

Both of them know it is closer to a lie the moment those words leave Akashi’s mouth.

The room is bare except for the chair Akashi sits on, all valuables already spirited away somewhere Mayuzumi does not, and does not care to, know. All he knows is they are now finally on the losing side of a long war, the irony of serving the one they called the Red Emperor a strange taste on his tongue.

It is not enough to convince him to abandon anything, and Akashi knows that. Though Mayuzumi understands the calm look in those eyes - he can already see a hint of weariness there, eating away at a once-steely gaze. That is a sight not afforded to many.

But even worn claws are dangerous, and Akashi Seijuurou is still a lion.

“I will leave you now.”

Akashi makes to stand, but Mayuzumi moves first, closing the distance between emperor and commander. Their crouched forms are still in the dusty sunset, and break apart slowly. Somewhere far off, someone is blowing a horn - too soon, too late.

If Akashi is surprised, he does not show it. Mayuzumi leaves him with a bow, without any more words. This battle has yet to begun, but his lips already taste like rust.

 

 

The battle goes as predicted. Akashi predicts everything, even his own losses, and Mayuzumi wonders if he counts that a personal victory of sorts.

He watches the remnants of the Imperial army file silently into the enemy barracks. High above, in the dense fortress, he can see a face obscured by the arrow slits.

 _You fought honorably and well, but I cannot let you go home._ The voice of the young shogun was gentle, but the look in his eyes was familiar. Little wonder now, that Akashi had long ago been the one to teach him the art of war.

Mayuzumi bites down on his lip until he draws blood. It courses down his chin and drips onto the crimson banner of sun and moon, gold and silver.

_Does it matter either way then?_

 

 

Three months pass and autumn comes. Mayuzumi hears the servants chattering about the siege on Rakuzan Palace finally coming to an end.

It may as well be on the other side of the earth. Kamakura is far from home, from the crimson and gold foliage of Arashiyama, from the poetry recitals that he has come to miss. Far from Akashi Seijuurou.

He does not hear anything about Akashi’s capture.

 

 

Perhaps some of his men, definitely some of Kuroko’s men, wonder why he hasn’t already done the deed in shame. Any other nobleman or high-ranking officer would’ve done so long before getting captured.

Mayuzumi attends a purifying ceremony in the garden, sitting in the far back. The monk drones on with his nembutsu, drawing out the tones as the audience follows along.

『 _The splendor of sun and moon does not shine in heaven, nor the fiery splendor of the maze of jewels of the gods -_ 』

He stands up quietly, and the audience in their trance remains undisturbed. Soft footsteps make little noise as he heads back into the castle.

Most of his men had been sent to work the fields for what little time they could before winter set in. It is not a hard life, and he had not expected such. At least they seem content serving under a famously forgiving shogun, whose fierceness in battle did not seem to extend to its aftermath, who bestowed peace in those spiritual matters.

Mayuzumi is not content.

 

 

He does not know who the new Emperor is, a child of ten chosen from a distant surviving branch of his clan. A child who will be cloistered and curtained off from the realities he will live to regret.

It is a strange emotion for Akashi Seijuurou, regret.

Mibuchi brings him news as he sits near the window, looking out into the forest beyond. The snow falls sparsely here, or sometimes not at all. “He is conscripted into the shogun’s army, to quell the rebellion in the east.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes.”

His remaining courtiers and servants know better than to still call him by his regnal name or titles, but the look in Mibuchi’s eyes tell him they still view him the same. Once this would have mattered the world to him, but Akashi knows that world will not return.

The little mountain retreat does not store anything of great significance. It is beautiful in its own way, the wood dark and lovely, the rooms pleasant in rain or shine. It is also far away from home, from the silvery snow that blankets Kyoto each winter, from the soothing melody of the shamisen drifting from the rooftop, long ago.

He imagines running fingers through snowy hair, inhaling the sweet scent of silk brocade. For a man long unused to a bedside partner, he is wary to discover longing.

 

 

Self-banishment hides him for a year, then five, then ten. Maybe they had forgotten about him on the mainland, the narrow straits separating island and island too inconveniencing a chasm to cross. Those thoughts drift less and less to his mind eve as he keeps watch, and in the meantime the fire burns low.

The local populace, far away from the politics and strife of the court, do not bother him, and Akashi wanders freely. He favors the forest and not the sea, and his people leave him to his personal time. Other days he seeks solace in the temple below the mountains, studying the collection of scriptures that have changed little with his faith.

(He had not dreamt often before this, but now the dreams come again and again, the cosmos crumbling before his eyes, drifting forever.)

Couriers arrive on the last day of spring to harken the arrival of the shogun’s retinue. Akashi watches a dozen horses trot up the narrow dirt road from his window, whinnying and throwing their manes. Four others follow on foot, bearing a small palanquin.

Akashi does not say anything when Kuroko enters the room, unarmed and dressed simply in pale silk. He can hear people whispering in the hallway - loudly, and indicates the door be closed.

“You were quite hard to find,” Kuroko starts, but not before bowing and taking his seat.

“We learn from each other, no?”

Kuroko nods. “Will you go back to the capital? The emperor is stricken with fever - he will pass soon.”

He knows what Kuroko means. Akashi is only three-and-thirty, still young enough to take a wife and continue the line. He can count three or four cousins who can be molded into such a position, but - tradition has its holds over all, despite the marginalization and humiliation wrought upon him. _Is this what the monks call karma?_

Softly, he asks, “Is he still under your care?”

His own network of information had gradually stopped reporting back a year back, quite a long time considering the circumstances. The country is at an uneasy peace, waiting for something to loom in the distance again. Kuroko does not look into his eyes. “Mayuzumi-san left for China three months ago. I have not heard from him since.”

Akashi’s heart stills for a long second. “China is attempting to conquer Goryeo at the moment - why?”

“If you do not know, neither will I.” At this, Kuroko reaches into his robes and pulls out a bound scroll, a fraying ribbon sealing it closed. “He left this. I think it goes to you.”

The scroll feels heavy in his hands. Akashi studies the ribbon, its worn edges and fading golden color. “This was my instructor’s.”

_(Chihiro had disliked him almost at once when his father brought him to the capital to be educated at age twelve. Akashi had not noticed him at first among the various lordlings clamoring for his attention, and that had suited Chihiro just fine._

_That was so curious to Akashi then.)_

He looks down at Kuroko, whose eyes fixate on him. “I apologize. I will not go back.”

“Are you sure?”

“Send me letters if necessary.”  _I will not go back to be a shadow. Do not ask me again_. Kuroko bows, expression unchanged, and leaves the room.

Akashi opens the scroll and starts to read.

 

 

 _In southern lands the red bean tree grows._  
_It sprouts when the vernal breeze blows._  
_Pick those beans with your hands filled._  
_And your yearning will be fulfilled._

 

 

“Did you come here just to die?”

_(This past decade I have spent in waiting, waiting, waiting. Do I want to wait any longer? Is Akashi still waiting, wherever he is? Or is he long dead and gone?)_

The monk has a kindly face, though Mayuzumi struggles to understand his speech. Foreign languages, particularly speech, have never been his forte, though he had brushed up some before coming here. And it is just his luck braving an upsetting voyage only to find out that the troubles had come to his landing port. He had escaped alive, but now -

“Not yet.”

He could find a girl. Settle down somewhere, even though he would have to relearn the language. Forget those sedentary years spent in vain, and be on the move again whenever war came knocking on his doors. The thought clinches at his chest, and he hates how it does not leave him.

“You could’ve done all those things in Japan. Why here?”

He shakes his head.  _I had to get away. You don’t understand._

“And I  _cannot_  understand, you see. That is the way fate intended for you.”

Mayuzumi leaves the monastery in the morning, leaving behind inane sayings of fate and enlightenment to another city, another foreign tongue. He will find neither on this journey.

 

 

 _Though we rely on_  
_love enduring forever,_  
_the true sadness is_  
_that we don't even know what_  
_life tomorrow will be like._

 

 

“Akashi,” Mibuchi ventures one day, while they are in the middle of a shogi game. “Do you - do you think that he might suppose you’re not in Japan anymore?”

Akashi’s eyes do not stray from the board. “I’ve considered it.”

“And?”

“It does not fit his character to go on a wild-goose chase to find me, especially in a foreign country.” His answer covers the unspoken question, but his thoughts float, momentarily, to the poem inscribed at the beginning of the scroll.

“Ah.”

The match goes much as expected, but Akashi cannot help but notice that he is being humored. He lays a hand on Mibuchi’s wrist once the game is over, staring into the other’s eyes. “Tell me what you mean by that.”

Mibuchi recognizes the look. He exhales. “Listen to yourself. You should forget about him. Think about what Kuroko said. Do you really want to spend the rest of your days like this? Even if you do not wish to wed or have anything to do with the court anymore - are you really content with this? I won’t say any further, but please think about it.”

Akashi lets go, silent, and Mibuchi takes this cue to leave, slightly more harried than his usual graceful self.

_Forget him. Replace him._

He leaves the board and pieces and moves towards the window. Akashi had not asked anyone else to stay, but they all had, for all these years. Who would he be to keep them here? What would he be to leave? It had all seemed so much easier ten years ago, when indecision was not a trait he considered.

Beyond the forest, in the temple at the foot of the mountains, the bell rings low and clear across the wild. It sounds beautiful.

 

 

 _Though you bid me come,_  
_How can I leave these dew-wet lotus leaves,_  
_And return to a world so full of grief?_

 

 

Mayuzumi leaves before the last Korean holdout falls, before Xanadu reaches its highest splendor, before the winds of war blow even further east.

On board the ship, he finds himself surrounded by people who, for the most part, do not see him. All the better. His hair has grown long, and it is not hard for those who do see to mistake him for much older than forty.

 _(Akashi used to cut his own hair, and he was very good at it. He had cut Mayuzumi’s hair too, once when he was seventeen._ Don't you think it's an honor, _Akashi had asked him, tongue-in-cheek,_ to have your hair cut by the Emperor? _It was the first time Mayuzumi heard him attempt humor. He had laughed.)_

This is an empty world for him now, though vaster than he imagined by far. Mayuzumi had seen Huangshan and the Great Wall, had sampled the gardens of Suzhou and Linan before the troubles came, his footsteps echoing through the paths of the Lion Garden and the halls of Hanshan Temple. Through simple beds that were not his, caressing words, dreamlike, that evaporated come each morning. The Yangtze had roared underfoot once, and he remembers it clearly.

_(Remembered, how many letters of sights and sounds he had written, in vein of the poets he copied from before. How many beads of crimson he had picked. How he had thrown all of it into the tumultuous waters, which flowed eternally to a final destination he could not reach.)_

He disembarks at Hakata Bay, and there is a message, urgent, waiting for him. The shogun’s seal rests heavy above the scroll, and he knows he is too late.

(Mayuzumi dreams of falling hair that night, a sea of red.)

 

 

 _Ten years, dead and living dim and draw apart,_  
_I don’t try to remember,_  
_But forgetting is hard._  
_…_  
_Even if we met, you wouldn’t know me,_  
_Dust on my face,_  
_Hair like frost._

 

 

The wooden building is burned halfway to the ground, an accident maybe, he does not know. The villagers tell Mayuzumi only three or four people were living in it before it happened; most of the inhabitants had already left five years ago. They did not count a redhead among the charred bodies.

A winding dirt road leads up the mountain, in the quickly waning sunlight. Behind him is the village, splendidly built for a hamlet in the middle of nowhere. He hears the bells ring, and someone tugs at his sleeve.

The girl, no older than five, looks up at him shyly. “Sir, maybe you can ask the abbot for help. He’s not  _really_  the abbot, but everyone listens to him.”

“Why should I?”

She stands on her tiptoes, and despite himself, Mayuzumi bends down to listen. “Even the shogun listens to him. That’s what my ma said.”

Mayuzumi sees the temple beyond the bend, and catches the evening prayer drifting up the road:

“ _\- not attached, without fear, without desires -_ ”

(His feet are stone again. When he was twenty, he had allowed his desires to fester and shrivel, only for someone to pick them up again and offer it to him, unashamed.)

_“- wise, patient - ”_

(He is not patient, he is not kind, the world will collapse before he knows it, and suddenly he is running.)

“ …and the troubles of the red dust that holds us all, are none.”

There is only one person left at the temple gates when he arrives, the other monks having gone inside for meditation. Mayuzumi feels his breath quicken as he coughs, the dust swirling in the evening sun not enough to blind him. The man smiles at him faintly, the lines shallow on his face. He wears the white robes of the abbot, but his head is without tonsure.

The world stills around him. _Is anyone anything they look to be?_

“I supposed we would both be silver-haired by the time we meet again.”

“You were wrong.” Mayuzumi takes a step towards him, and stops. “How ironic.”

“Hm?”

It is as if a river has poured forth from his mouth. “I looked. I tried, every city, every goddamn place, every temple for six years, and it worked for a while, you know? I almost stayed in the last one. I didn’t care enough to, in the end, I knew I couldn't, because I thought - heaven is too far away. And _you_. You were the one who stayed.”

“I was.” Akashi’s voice is soft, familiar,  _terrible_. There is a glimmer in his eyes, and Mayuzumi does not see water. “I stayed.”

Akashi is fire and always will be, burning through anything in his way, and this is no different from the stern commands behind the veil, from the army that had crumbled in their wake. It seemed several lifetimes ago that Mayuzumi had been captured and set free, and now -

“Have you leave this world behind, then?” He asks, sweeping a hand towards the mountain. “All of this? What is your name now, even? Your  _life_ , Akashi, and I - ”

Mayuzumi catches himself, inhaling sharply at the last word. Akashi is watching him with an air of insufferable grace, almost certainly manufactured, but the result is the same. He swallows the words back in, eyes closed, and they taste bitter against his tongue.

“ - I am not you. But I am here. Whether you care or not.”

He turns to leave, but a hand, coarser than he remembers it to be, grips his wrist tightly.

“I may reside here now, and wear these robes,” Akashi starts, tremulous in a way Mayuzumi has never heard him speak before. “But the world is not mine, neither this one nor yours. Would I throw it away if it were mine, still? Tell me.“

Behind him the bell tolls, once, twice, thrice. A flock of birds disappear into the thick of the forest, rustling leaves, and scale up the mountain. They will stay the night there, perhaps, pecking at blackened remains, or doze on wooden beams. Perhaps they will move onwards into the deepest recesses of the valley and slumber, heading north before the rainclouds arrive. The moon peeks out from behind the tallest trees, watching their shadows fade.

“Seijuurou.”

The little girl has gone home, safe in her mother's arms as the family prepares for night. Soon the entire village is asleep, far from fire or flight or redemption.

And Mayuzumi tastes blood again, and again, and again.

**Author's Note:**

> Actual authors of the poems, in order: Wang Wei, Sei Shonagon, Murasaki Shikibu (The Tale of Genji), Su Shi.
> 
> Other historical explanations can be found [here](http://sann-lykke.tumblr.com/private/123815065279/tumblr_nrbzr9sZ0Y1qdzlgr).


End file.
